A 54-year-old gold-medalist in chemistry, Ajay Grover, who also holds MBA and LLB degrees, has been arrested by the Noida police from Chandigarh while probing an illegal liquor factory case of Ghaziabad.

In an inter-district operation, the Noida Police had on September 26 busted the illegal factory running under the guise of “a juice manufacturer” in Ghaziabad’s Tronica City area and seized a record 15,000 litre of illicit liquor, estimated to be worth Rs 50 lakh.

The liquor factory was reportedly set up on the land owned by Vineet Malik, brother of Amit alias Bhoora, a gangster lodged in Punjab jail. Grover told he met Amit when he was shifted to the Patiala jail in January this year and it was there that the two decided to start this liquor business in Uttar Pradesh where his brother Vineet Malik could help them. After coming out on bail, Amit met Vineet in a hotel in Delhi where they both discussed the plan of opening a liquor factory.

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Ajay owned some land in Ponga Sahib, Himachal Pradesh on which a liquor factory was operating. Once during a raid on the factory by police, he was also arrested because of his ownership of the land, officials said.”Every time I visited the factory, I would keenly observe the process of making liquor and all the equipment being used. Being an M.Sc in Chemistry and a gold medallist in that, it was not difficult for me to understand the process,” he told police.

“During questioning, Ajay told that Vineet had a plot in Ghaziabad and it was decided to open the factory there. Once the infrastructure was ready, they registered the factory in the name of Amvin Beverages, a juice manufacturing unit. Vineet gave Ajay Rs 50,000 to open the factory”, SHO said.

A manager and a few workers were also hired for filling the bottles and packaging the liquor for supplying by a truck to various places in Uttar Pradesh, NCR, and Himachal Pradesh. “Half-a-dozen workers of the factory were arrested in the raid by a team of Noida police, which on October 15 arrested one more key man, Bobby Tomar alias Langda, who was absconding since September 26”, police said.

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